


Weird

by Vituperative_cupcakes



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Comfort, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-21
Updated: 2015-01-21
Packaged: 2018-03-08 11:50:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3208124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vituperative_cupcakes/pseuds/Vituperative_cupcakes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Edward consults with the only person he can really talk to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Weird

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, this is immediately post-episode 12, or maybe somewhere in the dregs of the episode itself. If your heart was also broken by this episode, prepare to get it broken...er.

Gordon knew he was back. That was it. The deal was done.

But he had to stay to the end of the day. Savor the emptiness of the place, when the beat cops weren't either giving him dirty or oddly worshipful looks(he supposed Bullock had told them he 'had' something on Loeb and were just puzzling out _what._ )

There was a smell particular to the place. Something almost schoolroom about it, but a tinge of animal beneath. Of living, hard and fierce, and tragedy and bravery and adrenaline and it smelled _so_ much better than the asylum.

Gordon smiled down at his desk. _His_ desk. Bullock(though he would deny it to death) was probably responsible for its unchanged arrangement. Jim had taken all his personal effects with him when he'd transferred, but the desk calender still lined up perfectly with the fade-lines where the sun hit the wood, and the rubber bands and paperclips still neatly segregated in the drawer.

Smiling like a fool, Gordon looked up from his desk and found Edward Nygma standing not a foot away.

“ _Ohjeez_ —” he slammed the drawer, and then told himself off. It just made it seem like he was looking at something innapropriate in the drawer. Although, he reflected, which was worse, Jim Gordon smiling over a secret stash of playboys or nothing at all?

Nygma was still as a statue, looking down and to the left of Gordon. Jim knew this meant he was about to be given Serious Talk and tried to lighten the mood.

“You snuck up on me, Ed,” he said jovially, “you know I've been away for a while. You have to give me some lead-in to the ninja act.”

Silence.

Jim looked him up and down. “You okay?”

Nygma sighed. “I'm weird.”

Jim managed not to blurt out: “you just now figured that out?”

Instead he said, “what's the matter Ed? Someone been teasing you again?”

“No. Well...no.”

Jim tried to smile. “Look, whatever they said—”

“I _am_ weird,” Ed said flatly, “that is simple fact detective.”

“Oh,” Jim said, “well.”

He sat in awkward silence. If only he had Barbara waiting for him, some excuse to summon him away—

But he had nothing. That was why he clung to this place. That was why he stayed on after everyone else had gone...

Jim looked at Ed, who just looked dispondant.

“You do a good job, Ed,” he said, “you should be proud of that.”

Ed sighed again. “I know. I'm really good at almost everything. But...there's something I'm missing.”

Jim cleared his throat. “Look Ed, there is more to life than being really good at doing things.”

Edward looked at him. “Like what?”

His voice was full of frustration, desperate and a little sad. The canned response Jim had planned melted from his tongue.

Edward Nygma was looking at him, openly pleading. He was honestly asking if there was more to life than work.

And Jim honestly and truly didn't know if he could say that there was.

“I—” he said

“There's—” he said.

“It's—” he said.

Nygma looked at him, eyes shining behind his birth-control glasses, lip worried between his enormous front teeth.

“Let's just go drink,” Gordon said numbly.

Nygma's face fell. “I was really hoping you'd have an answer.”

“Yeah, well...” he fetched his coat from the back of his chair. “if I knew _that_ , I'd be a much better policeman.”

Edward was suddenly irate. “No, you're a great policeman. The best on the force!”

“And that got me transferred, Ed. See a pattern?”

Edward fell silent again. Jim realized he had never seen the technician out of work uniform. What did Nygma do for fun? Did he ever even have it?

“I don't uderstand,” Nygma said, “why can't I find a solution to this? My intellect is not small, my reference pool is olympic-sized, I'm not afraid to consult other people...why can't I solve it?”

Gordon buttoned his coat. “Well Ed...I think you've probably been looking in the wrong place for an answer.”

“Aha, but that implies there's a _right_ place!” Nygma had his finger up, like he'd caught Gordon in a logical fallacy.

Gordon just smiled and said, “let's go, Ed.”

“Oh.” Nygma was crestfallen. He gathered some files to his chest. The same files he'd been carrying around all day, Gordon noticed.

“You might want to put those back.” Gordon motioned with his chin. “Miss Kringle runs a tight ship.”

Edward glumly nodded. He made no move.

Jim sighed and checked his phone. No messages. No missed calls.

“Look, we'll just return them tomorrow,” he said, “let's go.”

Nygma looked confused, a rare event.

“I mean it,” Jim said, “ _I_ need a drink. And you...need to be somewhere else. You don't have to drink, I'll have them make you a Shir—something else.”

Realization dawned slowly on Nygma's face. His mouth dropped open.

“You want me—along?” he gasped.

“Do I need to ask again?” Gordon joked. He could kinda see how Nygma's intensity turned people off. But then Nygma smiled like a ten-year-old getting a bike at christmas and Gordon couldn't help but return it.

“Screw the mysteries of the human heart,” he said, “let's get stinko.”

“Yes, indeed, let's libate away our woes,” Nygma said, and then giggled in an unnerving fashion. Gordon patted him on the back, making a “tone it down” gesture with his other hand. Nygma covered his mouth, trying to suppress a smile. He laughed at odd intervals all the way down to the garage, but that was okay. Gordon did too.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I just can't with these two.


End file.
